The eternal impulse of human loneliness and the impulse to get rid of loneliness. Silence sometimes brings strength, you need to hold it tight; silence sometimes also puts shackles on people, you have to break free from it.
Writer: Rio’s Tears of Slavery
How long have you not updated your Moments?
Has your Moments also been set to “show only the last three days”?
How many friends have “disappeared” from your Moments?
This seems to be a soul-searching question for us right now.
Not long ago, the Weibo topic “Why so many people have disappeared from Moments” topped the first place on the trending search list, which can be regarded as a side proof of this soul-searching question.
Figure/Network
Some people say that a more accurate statement should be that many middle-aged people have disappeared from Moments – Wang Xiaobo said:
Life is a process of being slowly hammered, people get older day by day, their desires disappear day by day, and finally become like a hammered cow.
Indeed, people in this age group, especially men, should have their desire to express themselves decrease along with their hormones.
01
Some people have summarized the reasons why some people have disappeared from Moments.
For example, privacy and security issues. As personal information leaks and is abused on the Internet, some people worry that sharing details of their lives in Moments will lead to privacy leaks;
Social pressure issues. Some people may feel that Moments needs to be constantly updated, liked, and commented on to maintain social relationships, which is tiring;
Time management and efficiency issues. Some people may realize that there is an imbalance between the time they spend on Moments and the returns they get, which prompts them to choose to reduce or stop using Moments, and so on.
I think this ultimately involves a trust issue.
In fact, Moments is no longer a real Moments.
With the dense coverage and extension of social media to daily life – in social situations, people are no longer used to handing out business cards, but scanning a WeChat QR code – a person’s Moments is becoming more and more complex, including relatives, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, and strangers. This makes group management cumbersome, and people are no longer willing to spend a lot of time managing the privacy settings of different groups.
Figure/Tuchong Creative
Posting a dynamic in Moments is more complicated than imagined, because it is not only a way of communication, but also an expression of values.
Recently, there is a very popular poem online, titled “The Date Didn’t Work Out” (Author: Ren Xiangjun). The historical reading volume of the public account that launched this poem is around 1000, but this poem has become a hit, reaching 100,000+.
The poem is not long, and it is recorded as follows:
Everything went smoothly/Ate together/Then drank coffee together/Also watched a movie/The afternoon wind was cool and moderate/The room was elegant and clean/Everyone took a shower/Casually talked about the Russia-Ukraine and Israeli-Hamas wars/Broke up.
The reason why this poem has become a hit is because it uses a colloquial form to truthfully and profoundly reveal the scene of the tearing of the bottom line of values around us.
In fact, recently, the conflict between Hamas and Israel has erupted, and there have been confrontations and divisions in our Moments and WeChat groups. There is a lot of “firepower” between those who support Israel and those who support Hamas.
In this case, some people simply choose to reduce or not publish content that may cause controversy and expose their values, so as to avoid unnecessary trouble. Some people in the system are especially so.
02
There is such a topic on Zhihu: Why are more and more people not posting in Moments? The highly praised answer is: The “Moments” they want to post have been sent to the people they care about in the form of private messages.
In middle age, many people may have already lived through it – Moments often becomes a place for people to show their lives. Many people present a seemingly perfect image through carefully selected and processed photos and content, flowers and plants, travel and food, creating a persona of a peaceful life, but many middle-aged people are already bored with this. They don’t want to post what they can post, and they don’t dare to post what they want to post. It is not surprising that Moments gradually becomes desolate.
However, it is difficult to say that they have really disappeared from Moments, or that they have said goodbye to Moments.
Because, after all, people are a gregarious animal. On the WeChat interface, there is a small, lonely figure facing a huge planet. Loneliness may be a person’s destiny, but people are also trying to get rid of loneliness throughout their lives, just like getting rid of gravity.
From this perspective, Moments is a great invention. It links countless lonely people together, shaping a kind of life based on the Internet social platform that has never been seen before. Doesn’t it sound like the famous saying of the communication master Marshall McLuhan – “The medium is the extension of man”?
Figure/Tuchong Creative
Someone once cited an example. One day, she posted a Moments saying, “I don’t want to spend a special holiday alone, who will have dinner with me?” It was originally a bit of a joke, but she didn’t expect to meet a friend soon. While she was having a great time with her friend, she received a call from her father, who had seen his daughter’s Moments and was afraid that she would be sad, so he hurried to call and comfort her.
I have also had similar experiences.
During the epidemic, one time my family suddenly fell ill. Considering the risk of cross-infection at the hospital at that time, I, who rarely posted in Moments, posted a Moments before going to the hospital, asking for a certain medicine.
I didn’t expect to receive a lot of responses quickly. Many friends who didn’t interact much in Moments contacted me. Finally, a friend who lived not far from me drove over and delivered the medicine – no wonder there is a saying, “The all-purpose Moments”.
03
As early as the WeChat Open Class in 2021, Zhang Xiaolong said in his speech that 1.09 billion users open WeChat every day, of which 780 million people are swiping Moments every day, and 120 million people update Moments every day.
This set of numbers is very interesting. It shows that although many people choose to be invisible in Moments, they still pay attention to others, that is to say, while they don’t want to be seen by others, they want to see others.
In fact, these people who swipe Moments, are not only for obtaining information, but also subconsciously looking for like-minded people to get rid of loneliness.
There was a hit article in Moments that said that consistent values will replace kinship and become a new interpersonal bond. This is a judgment based on social media.
Although this is not necessarily absolute, kinship cannot be replaced if the values are not consistent; however, it also does reveal a new type of interpersonal relationship in modern society, that is, the importance of kinship is fading, and people will come together because of the commonality of values, the mutual affection, and the resonance of the soul.
People start with appearance and end with values.
Nobel laureate in economics Amartya Sen once said that to examine a person’s judgment, we mainly examine the diversity of his information channels and information sources. There are countless poor people who have been living in a single piece of information for a long time, and it is a completely distorted and reversed piece of information, which is the biggest reason for people’s ignorance and self-confidence.
Figure/Tuchong Creative
Based on this, I think Moments also has a screening function, that is, to eliminate those who are far away from their own spiritual world.
In middle age, it is often said that the interpersonal circle needs to be reduced, and Moments is one of the best ways to mark and screen people. From this perspective, the so-called tearing of values in Moments is not entirely a bad thing. It inadvertently completes the reorganization of interpersonal relationships.
However, the premise of screening or being screened is that you have to expose yourself first. If everyone wants to discover others but doesn’t want to be discovered by others, this is a paradox in itself.
Therefore, if you claim that you don’t post in Moments, it’s like someone claiming that they don’t read books in the Internet age, which is a very boring thing. Not posting in Moments may also become another standard for middle-aged people, such as wearing hand strings and holding a teacup with wolfberries.
Moments may of course iterate in the future. But the eternal impulse of human loneliness and the impulse to get rid of loneliness. Silence sometimes brings strength, you need to hold it tight; silence sometimes also puts shackles on people, you have to break free from it.
Similarly, a middle-aged person who doesn’t post in Moments may mean being open-minded and mature, but it may also be a sign of aging. At this time, you need to maintain the necessary vigilance and find the heart that has a strong desire to express itself like a teenager.
Therefore, please walk out of the cave you have created and set, okay?
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